My wife just read my last post, and she was not happy with it. She says that I ruin sappy movies by over analyzing them. She is probably right. I tend to over analyze movies.

Jeremiah Johnson is one of my favorite Westerns, and I critique it because it is not a true portrayal of mountain man life. They never show him doing his job, which should be trapping beaver for a fur trading company. That is what I loved about The Revenant. It actually showed the bloody and grueling work of mountain men. Of course, they also filmed a movie in the Canadian Rockies even though the actual story took place in the Dakotas. Those are two places that do not look the same.

There is a long list of movies that I have over analyzed, but there is one that I could not get my head around. In The Bridges of Madison County, Meryl Streep watched her husband and kids leave town to show a cow at the state fair. Then, Clint Eastwood shows up and sweeps her off of her feet. Most people walked out of the movie thinking about this love that could never be fulfilled. I left the movie thinking about her poor husband showing the cow at the state fair. He would never know that his wife was screwing around while audiences cried over her heartbreak.

Anyway, I guess I am bad about over analyzing movies. I look for the inconsistencies. Heck, I have my classes watch movies based on historic events and make them write papers about how wrong the movies are.

Maybe I am taking this movie thing too far. I expect movies to tell me what really happened, and movies are not going to do that. Many of them are going to be entertaining. Many of them are going to be thought-provoking. A bunch of them are going to suck. I just need to understand that they are rarely going to be realistic.

The latest edition of Cowboys & Indians magazine has arrived with sad news. September saw the death of Stefan Gierasch, who played Del Gue in Jeremiah Johnson.

Gierasch created a great representation of mountain men as he showed Robert Redford the ways of survival in the mountains. At the end of the movie, Del and Jeremiah were saying their goodbyes, and Gierasch spoke the lines that epitomize the thinking of mountain men – both real and imagined. He said:

Ain’t this somethin’? I told my pap and mam I was comin’ to the mountains to trap and be a mountain man; acted like they was gut-shot. Says, “Son, make your life go here, son. Here’s where the peoples is. Them mountains is for animals and savages.” I says, “Mother Gue, the Rocky Mountains is the marrow of the world,” and by God, I was right.

As the two men parted ways, he continued:

I ain’t never seen ’em, but my common sense tells me the Andes is foothills, and the Alps is for children to climb! Keep good care of your hair! These here is God’s finest scupturings! And there ain’t no laws for the brave ones! And there ain’t no asylums for the crazy ones! And there ain’t no churches, except for this right here! And there ain’t no priests excepting the birds. By God, I are a mountain man, and I’ll live ’til an arrow or a bullet finds me. And then I’ll leave my bones on this great map of the magnificent…

Geirasch appeared in several productions that I have watched – The Hustler, High Plains Drifter, Carrie, Silver Streak, and The Champ. However, he will live in my mind as the crusty mountain man, Del Gue.

Rest in Peace, Stefan Gierasch. As Del Gue, you said, “I decided that when I depart from this life I’d like to leave something.” You left a great performance in one of the great movies.

Winter has arrived. The wind is blowing. Temperature is dropping into the single digits. I have been wearing my longhandles. If you do not know what they are, then you have not spent a winter in the southern states.

For me, winter has arrived at the same time that work has returned to my life. The past few days have been spent in meetings, and classes start on Monday. Of course, that means I have to leave the comfort of home and brave the elements to disperse ignorance.

It also means that I expect to run into Hatchet Jack.

Unfortunately, Jeremiah Johnson has already been by and taken the Hawken rifle.

Thinking about the fate of Hatchet Jack makes the cold less inviting than normal. However, there are those who thrive in such conditions.

This guy is a good example.

Then, there is this dude.

Of course, this one has to be included.

Oh yeah, this guy should never be forgotten.

People in Middle Tennessee know this bird.

This creature is hard to find, but there is no doubt that cold weather is his thing.

As you brave the bitter cold, remember that not everyone hates it as much as Hatchet Jack. Some crazy people out there actually like it.

We spent quite a bit of time debating what to do next. My nephew wanted to see Olympic National Park, but, while it would have been cool, I felt that it was too far. Instead, I thought we should see Mt. Rainier. We made our points before he got to the crux of the matter. He was afraid that we would look at the mountain; say something about it being a big rock; and drive on down the road. He had reason to worry because we are prone to do that. Patience is not our virtue.

I promised him that we would stop anywhere that he wanted to stop. If he saw a trail that he wanted to walk, then we would walk it. On top of that, we would not complain about it. He was not convinced.

Honestly, I think going to Olympic would have been cool, but we were not set up for it. If I had it to do over, then we would have spent all of our time in Washington. That way we could have done both. Crater Lake was interesting, but we spent a lot of time just to see one thing.

With the debate behind us, we set out for Mt. Rainier. Along the way, we went through several towns where logging was the major industry. I always think it is interesting to drive through towns. As Del Gue says in Jeremiah Johnson, “Here’s where the people is.” I wonder if Jeremiah, Del Gue and Bear Claw ever made it up to Mt. Rainier.

Anyway, we drove the high road to the mountain, and Mt. Rainier is truly an impressive thing to see.

However, it is still a big rock, and I do not have much to write about it.

On the way down from the mountain, we stopped by a mountain stream that was interesting. My nephews and I took the trail and crossed a small bridge to the other side. There were a lot of rocks and a little water, but there are probably times when the water is pouring down.

There is a funny story about my youngest nephew losing his footing on the trail, but I will spare him the embarrassment of putting it out here for everyone to read.

After all of this, we stopped in Longmire, Washington for lunch at the National Park Inn. We had thought about eating at the lodge in the middle of the park, but this turned out to be a better decision. Besides, my dad’s favorite show is Longmire, which made this a fitting place to spend some time.

We made our way back to Longview, Washington and more pie at Shari’s. This time, I skipped Marionberry and went with Pecan. It tastes more like home.

Some of you know about this series of posts. I write for a while about how messed up and confused state in which my iPod stays. It is filled with such an array of music that is gets confused and does not know exactly who it is. In short, it has an identity crisis.

Now, my iPod has some really serious issues. When my old laptop fell to the Blue Screen of Death, my files were trapped inside.

Luckily, the computer guy saved those files and brought them over to the Mac. Tests. Syllabi. Papers. Speeches. They are all here. He was also able to retrieve the music files I had uploaded from CD’s. Unfortunately, the computer guy was not able to get them back into iTunes.

You know about iTunes. They like to protect what you have purchased but have no use for what you bought in a real record store and put on the computer yourself.

Anyway, my music library is lacking. That means my iPod is in limbo. It still has the songs that were there before, but I cannot add any cool new stuff. You know, like the Jeremiah Johnson soundtrack that I bragged about the other day. Hopefully, my nephew can fix it when he comes back from college in a couple of weeks.

Until then, I will keep my iPod busy with a list of twenty random songs that can be found in its brain.

“Ain’t No Sunshine” by Bill Withers

“Rovin’ Gambler” by Mac Wiseman (who was just today inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame)

A few years ago, we men of the family took a trip to Montana. When we returned, I put together a series of posts about our adventures. I was just skimming through the pictures and came upon one that I took in Lewistown, Montana. The town sits at the geographic center of the state. In fact, the exact center is next to the indoor pool at the hotel we stayed in. There is some tile work in the floor marking the spot.

However, it was not the pool area that interested me. My nephew and I took a stroll down the main street and took some pictures along the way. This one is my favorite.

The Judith is a movie house that sits in the middle of downtown. I have no idea how old it is, but, as we stood in front of it, I could imagine people of years past standing in line to buy a ticket. They had no idea that there would be a time when movies would have special effects like those in The Dark Knight Rises.

The idea of a 21st Century movie playing in an old theater intrigued me. It was as if we were caught in some time warp that even Batman could not find his way out of.

The name of the theater was also intriguing. I assume it was named for the Judith River that flows nearby. In Jeremiah Johnson, Bear Claw tells Jeremiah that if he leaves pelts by the river, then steamboats will take them and leave gold coins behind. I have no idea if that is historically accurate. Something tells me that it is just a cool movie line. I do know that if Jeremiah Johnson had been playing, then I would have bought a ticket. It would have been the appropriate thing to do.

We walked into the lobby to see how it looked. It was small but had a concession stand with all of the right candy. We even thought about watching The Dark Knight Rises but decided to keep walking down the street.

Eventually, we came upon a McDonald’s. Where can you go in this country without that happening?